Recent News

New GSA MOBIS Schedule for Hemsley Fraser

Effective February 20, 2008, Hemsley Fraser is pleased to announce the award of a GSA MOBIS contract, #GS-10F-0129U. Click here for more information on reaching Hemsley Fraser through this GSA vehicle.

Also, Hemsley Fraser has been certified as a small business concern for Federal contracting purposes.

Demos acquires Hemsley Fraser, one of the UK's leading learning organizations

8th April 2008

Demos, one of the French and European leaders in continuing education, announces today the acquisition of 100% of Hemsley Fraser Group, one of the UK's leading learning providers. This external growth transaction enables Demos Group to accelerate its development outside France significantly by reinforcing its presence in the United Kingdom and also rolling out in the United States, where Hemsley Fraser has a growing subsidiary. Moreover, it further enriches Demos Group's offer within the areas of strategic learning consultancy, managed services and learning outsourcing.

This recent acquisition enables Demos Group to instantly become one of the major vocational training players outside France. Indeed, Hemsley Fraser boasts a number of complementary partnerships in several areas of the world, including the Middle East, India and Japan, which means the Group can serve American and European multinationals effectively with locally based providers.

Hemsley Fraser was founded in 1991 by Iain Lovett and has grown rapidly to become a market leader in learning, with an excellent brand and strong levels of awareness in the UK. It provides a full and comprehensive learning services offer, which combines open training courses (40% of revenue) and total learning solutions, encompassing consultancy, customized training, managed services and outsourcing (60% of revenue).

The company totals 140 employees, supported by a network of 400 expert contributors, and boasts a highly prestigious UK and international client base including Airbus, Accenture, Royal Bank of Scotland, Norwich Union and BSkyB.

Hemsley Fraser is profitable and generated revenues of around 11 million GBP in the United Kingdom and 1.5 million USD in the United States, in 2007.

With complementary business models and similar enterprise culture, the integration of Hemsley Fraser into Demos Group offers significant prospects to the enlarged group in terms of the following:

International Roll Out

Hemsley Fraser's clients will benefit from Demos' substantial and solid geographical positioning throughout the world.
Hemsley Fraser offers Demos' clients new deployment prospects within the English speaking world including the extensive US market.

Complementary Services to Expand Group Offer

Hemsley Fraser's innovative capability regarding Strategic Learning Consultancy, Assessment, Customized Design and Outsourcing represent both true added value for Demos.
Hemsley Fraser, which to date has limited e-learning capability, will benefit from Demos' real know-how: design, tailor-made production and access to the over 1200 e-learning modules, which will soon be adapted and translated into English.
Hemsley Fraser has an open training course offer of around 200 courses and will also enlarge this learning offer by integrating part of Demos' range of products directly, which currently totals 1700 courses.

Pooling of Capability and Resources

Learning methods that are complementary, proven and tested by each enterprise’s clients worldwide respectively.
A global network of experts and trainers that displays uniformity in terms of quality and costs, which enables each client’s margins to be controlled while nevertheless offering a faultless service.
Regarding new technologies, with the setting up of common platforms.
Regarding purchases, with the pooling of strategic purchases, and in particular for marketing, IT services.

Jean Wemaëre, Demos Chairman and CEO, says:

"We are delighted to welcome Iain Lovett and his teams into Demos Group. After the acquisitions of MindOnSite (a Swiss company) in January and of Pragoeduca in the Czech Republic in February, this transaction enables us to take a step further in our European consolidation strategy, and in all likelihood to surpass the 100 million euro full-year revenue threshold. It instantly grants us a leading position in the United Kingdom, which is a mature market where compared to France a higher percentage of employees turn to vocational training. It also opens up considerable growth prospects in the United States. Furthermore, this acquisition also favors our mainland Europe subsidiaries since they will benefit from Hemsley Fraser’s large corporate client base. This acquisition will also facilitate our establishing in the Middle East, India and Japan where we will rapidly be able to roll out Hemsley Fraser learning methods. Moreover, for the same reasons, it will help us develop in China. Lately, because our activities are highly complementary, this transaction will generate added value for each of the two groups, and is an amazing opportunity for Demos to enrich its offer. Thanks to this value-generating transaction, Demos is reinforcing its ability to respond to the demands of large international clients and confirming its position as a global player in vocational training."